White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said: "The President has been briefed on the state of Hawaii's emergency management exercise. This was purely a state exercise."

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz tweeted: "AGAIN FALSE ALARM. What happened today is totally inexcusable. The whole state was terrified. There needs to be tough and quick accountability and a fixed process."

David Ige, Governor of Hawaii, confirmed to CNN: "It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the change over of a shift and an employee pushed the wrong button...The warning went out to cell phones, Television and radio got the emergency alert."

Ige also tweeted that he's meeting "with with top officials of the State Department of Defense and the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to determine what caused this morning’s false alarm and to prevent it from happening again."

Within about 45 minutes an alert was sent confirming it was a false alarm: